london alternative press fair

Lookie, lookie, I had my own stall! This was a first for me and very exciting. And it couldn’t have been a friendlier place; thanks to the huge publicity campaign by Jimi Gherkin and Peter Lally, the venue was PACKED. People were buying things, and stuff was flying off the tables! And I got to be next to two fab tablemates, my friend David O’Connell and a lovely guy I met for the first time, Wes White. (A third of a table each isn’t much room, so I’m glad we three got on well!)

Funnily enough, the thing that sold the fastest and got the most attention was my little neighbour girl‘s two minis, go figure. She is destined for great things, that kid. Here are people fussing over them:

I had a few great LiveJournal moments, meeting joedecie (whose comic I mentioned recently), yunni, cdave and ratherlemony for the first time. (Hooray!) I also got to see harveyjames, ryclaude, mondoagogo, and got some great comics from Maartje Schalkx, Al Maceachern, Naniiebim (Louise Ho), Dr Parsons and a little packet of circus items from Divya Venkatesh, Simone Rodney-Foli and Stacey Roper. It was great to see loads of the Camberwell college illustration gang turn up (I plugged the fair rather mercilessly in my talk there last week), also Viviane Schwarz and Elissa Elwick, some SCBWI people including Alex Milway, Sue Eves, Kim Toohey and lots of people I’d met at Comics Creators Guild gatherings and at Oxford’s Caption festival.

I wish I had taken more photos, but here’s one with Will chamonkee and Dave tozocomic. Dave’s going to let me share a table with him at the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing on 28 March, which should be more good fun.

Will Kirkby and Louise Ho were driving back up north the same night, and for some reason, Will thought it would be easier to leave his car at my place. But we came out of the fair to the deepest snow I’ve ever seen in London and it took us ages even to get back to mine. Good luck to Will, who is determinedly committed to showing up to work in Sheffield tomorrow morning!
Will and I had both planned to do Hourly Comics Day, but running a stall was pretty full-on, and I just couldn’t manage it. But I’m looking forward to seeing other people’s results here!

Edit: Dave’s posted a fab drawing of our table and some photos here!
And Bugpowder has posted links and photos here.